Kudos to the Organizers of the First International Virtual Conference on Ukraine

Today we mark Ukraine's Independence Day (33 years of independence) and the past two days I had the distinct pleasure of taking part in the first International Virtual Conference on Ukraine. It was excellent and I wanted to express my thanks to Professors Almas Heshmati, Lars Hartvigson, and Olena Nizalova for putting together such a timely and interesting program. It was laudable how the scheduling was done with speakers and participants from Hawaii, California, Texas, Massachusetts, multiple European countries, including Ukraine, as well as Vietnam, Australia, and Morroco!

Jonkoping International Business School (JIBS) in Sweden was the host of this virtual conference, in collaboration with its partners.

I took a snapshot of the closing session, which is posted below.

Each day, the conference began at 3AM, my time; but, despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions that I managed to join and, of course, it was an honor to present our latest research with my PhD student Dana Hassani and Kyiv School of Economics colleagues Oleg Nivievski and Pavlo Martyshev.

The presentation was based on our paper, noted above, which will be published any day now in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. The slide deck of our presentation can be downloaded here. I was delighted that all the co-authors of our paper were present! Plus, I enjoyed "seeing" colleagues in Ukraine, with whom I have also published: Elena Besedina of the Kyiv School of Economics and Myroslava Kushnir of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

I also thoroughly enjoyed being on a panel with: 

Pham Khanh NAM, UEH University Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hans LÖÖF, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden

Vesa KANNIAINEN, University of Helsinki, Finland

Mykola TKACHENKO, CEO of SOE Prozorro (Transparency), Ukraine.

Yuriy BILAN, regrettably, could not make our panel, as scheduled.

A remarkable amount of information was exchanged and the discussions were terrific.

The keynote talks by Roman Sheremeta and Yuriy Gorodnichenko were excellent! I wish that all presentations could have been recorded and posted since with the different time zones it was challenging to hear all in real time.

Themes that resonated throughout included: the resilience of Ukrainians; the fact that Russia's war on Ukraine is a massive threat to global security; Ukraine needs immense support from its allies; economic & military aid to Ukraine is the best investment; agriculture and IT continue to be shining lights in Ukraine whereas steel production has essentially collapsed; investing in transportation routes is critical and keeping maritime routes safe and efficient; human capital must be brought back and nurtured; security is of the utmost importance; damages are immense to educational institutions, healthcare, critical infrastructure (energy, transportation, logistics, supply chains), and the environment, and so much more!

I was impressed how much researchers and practitioners and even PhD students who took part want to help. There was emphasis on the need to get research results in front of policy and decision-makers more quickly.

Information on this conference can be found here. 

The full program has been posted here.

Outstanding Future BA (Business Analytics) Prof Workshop at the University of Iowa

I recently returned from the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. I was there to give an invited talk on research at the 3rd Future BA (Business Analytics) Workshop. Many thanks to Professor Ann Melissa Campbell for inviting me and congratulations to her and to her workshop co-organizers Professors Kang Zhao and Beste Basciftci on the success of the workshop!

There had been 80 applicants with 28 selected and participating with advanced PhD students and postdocs from many universities taking part including: UC Berkeley, Virginia Tech, Purdue, Clemson, University of Oklahoma, University of Buffalo, Harvard, MIT, and UMass Amherst.  It was my first time in Iowa and it was great to see the faculty and to also hear from the other invited speakers: Professor Tallys Yunes, who spoke on teaching, and Professor Bin Gu, who also spoke on research. 

Below is a photo that was taken of the group. It was quite remarkable that I had met several of the PhD students previously. 

I was also thrilled that my PhD student, Dana Hassani, took part. It was great to hear him give the elevator speech on his research and to hear from the others.

What impressed me was the enthusiasm and passion of the participants for their research, which I found uplifting and inspiring. 

The workshop kept us all very busy with the presentations, nice lunches and coffee breaks, networking sessions, and a dinner at a winery.

We could not resist taking a few more photos and the smiles on everyone's faces show how rewarding this workshop was.

I have posted the slide deck of my presentation here.

I wish all those who took part best of luck on their research and completing their dissertations, if they have not done so, plus successful academic job interviews!

I was very touched by the number of nice email messages I received from the PhD students and participants - they were very heartwarming and I appreciate the politeness and the reaching out.

This group has established a very nice and supportive network and I warmly thank Professors Campbell, Zhao, and Basciftci. It was also terrific to hear from Professor Barrett Thomas and to see Professor Thiago Serra, who has just joined the Tippie Business Analytics faculty after spending 5 years at Bucknell University.

Some background on this workshop on its website here.